Episode 66 – Challenging Changes

Welcome to Episode 66 of Blessing of Frost! In this episode, Majik and Kurn chat with Fugara, the Co-GM of Choice of Skywall about the recent decision to refocus the guild towards a 10-man raiding team from a 25-man team. We look at some of the reasons and some of the options the officers had available and why and how they chose to refocus on 10s. Essentially, it’s a case study on yet another guild that has run into problems this expansion, but these guilds are not the exceptions — it’s very common for 25-mans to experience the problems Choice did.

Post navigation

One Reply to “Episode 66 – Challenging Changes”

Recurring theme here is that alot of older guilds that have been around since at least the start of BC find thier numbers dwindling and then say the quality of apps is not to their standards. While that very well may be, to maintain a decently progressed 25man guild, I feel that you have to adapt with the player base.

What I mean by that is for a long time now it has become easier and easier to level while not having to learn your class. Not even in low level dungeons are players tested on abilites needed for later end game raids. I found my guild in a similar situation of Choice of Skywall.
The question came up that maybe we should switch to 10mans for Mists….After a very long chat on Mumble we came up with a new strategy on how we will deal with recruits, and almost completely changing the “type” of raider we would bring on.

We now instead of focusing on what recruits brought to us based on what they were, we shifted gears to focus on what they could be. It went from a long typed out App to a series of mumble interviews with 2-3 O’s each and then trying to form an opinion on whether the recruit could work. It boiled down to :

1. Does the person “fit” personality wise with us as a whole?
2. Can this person “learn”?

When I say learn in this case it meant numerous things. Do they have humbleness to admit that there are better ways to do things, do they have the mental process to apply new ideas about their particular class, and could they do this in a timely fashion? (4 weeks)

The results were astounding through test 10man raids and then onto test 25man raids, it was awesome watching players go from having a bare perception on how to play turn into very formidable raiders. Now of course there were players who didn’t get it or just didn’t work out, out every 10 apps i’d say 4 were solid additions. Another benefit of this it garners extreme loyalty to the guild. These were players that knew they could raid if given the opportunity to unlock their potential, and finally a guild did and grew with them.

Going back to the beginning there are far less raiders left from the good old days like we remember, 25man guilds have to adjust with the times and be willing to put in the work to bring potential raider apps up to speed. If not, we’ll see more and more Choice of Skywall’s and thier stories.